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Cholera epidemic in Haiti: the bourgeoisie is a class of assassins

Submitted by ICConline on 12 November, 2010 - 08:18

Nine months after the earthquake which ravaged Haiti, leaving hundreds of thousands dead[1], the shady practices of the ruling class seem to have no limit. Despite all the fine promises of financial aid, millions of victims are still stuck in overcrowded camps. There have been around 10,000 NGO personnel on the island, plus thousands of well-armed troops from different countries, not to mention all the reporters looking for scoops and the politicians seeking a bit of publicity. But despite all the hypocritical tears of the world’s leaders[2], very little has been done. This is a population of little real interest as a source of profit, although it is still subject to the worst kind of banditry on the ground. But while all the world specialists were announcing as early as April that the worst was still to come with the arrival of the rainy season in an already catastrophic sanitary situation – a combination guaranteed to bring epidemic diseases – the world bourgeoisie did no more than wait for the rain.

Now we have the expected epidemic of cholera and it will have dramatic consequences. For several weeks, the illness has been spreading very rapidly and the mortality rates are extremely high. At the time of writing, the Haiti government has counted over 330 deaths and millions have been infected, but in this exhausted country it is impossible to get precise figures, and a number of indices lead you to suspect that the real figures are much higher.

The endless laments of the ‘international community’ are at the moment a bit more discreet than the disgusting media show organised at the time of the earthquake. And for good reason! There would be a lot more explaining to do because it is now more obvious than ever that the bourgeoisie is directly responsible for this disaster.

Cholera is a disease linked to insalubrious living conditions, which is what the Haitians are living in. It is transmitted through a bacterium that lives in water contaminated by faecal matter. In a country where less than 3% of the ruins caused by the earthquake have been evacuated, you can imagine the state of the water supply that the population is forced to use. The reconstruction of this country requires material and financial means. They were promised by various bourgeoisies looking to boost their influence and find a few new markets but they have not been forthcoming: more than 70% of the loans that were announced have not actually been handed over.

Furthermore, the diffusion of the bacterium is also facilitated by the chaotic movement of the population and by the thousands of evictions by property owners impatient to get back the land now occupied by the camps.

The law of profit will always make the bourgeoisie a class of unscrupulous murderers.

[2] Examples of hypocrisy: Sarkozy, whose minister Besson promised to stop expelling Haitians who had come to France to escape the disaster, a promise that lasted 10 days. Similar story in the US, which has a long history of blocking or expelling Haitian refugees.